Nathaniel Wakeman is the only child and son of a modest vicar, who lives in the quiet and idyllic confines of the Isle of Wight. When his maternal grandfather dies, Natty’s mother reconnects with her estranged and wealthy brother and his family in hopes of raising Natty up in the world, to urge him to go beyond the humble life he’s always known.

Though his cousins show no particular regard for him, one of them, at least, lures him away from his retired life and introduces him to the world—and to the son of a baron from Somerset, Miles Lovell. Natty gradually finds himself drawn toward the older and worldlier gentleman and returns to his father’s vicarage a changed young man. He also seems to have attracted the attention of a ghost, one that has followed him back to the island.

Haunted by a woman in white, who seems to appear when he’s at his weakest, Natty struggles with his own nature and with his family’s increasing difficulties. His mother is distant, hiding things from him as she never has, and his father is aging before his eyes. Quarrels between his parents grow more and more frequent, and Natty’s increasing terror of familiar and beloved footpaths add to the spiraling tension at home.

While Natty tries to find his place in the world, his childhood is crumbling around him, and he becomes more and more convinced that his persistent ghost is a harbinger of doom.

EXCERPT:

I leaned out the window to wave at Marianne and my aunt and uncle -- Edward and Vincent thought to remain indoors -- calling out my thanks one final time. As I withdrew back inside the coach, my gaze swept past the trees that lined the driveway, and I caught sight of something that, at first, didn’t quite settle into my mind. It was such a fleeting glimpse that nothing truly fixed itself in my mind’s eye in anything more than fragments, but those same fragments dealt me with such a blow as to nearly knock me off my seat in my shock.

I must have stared at the empty seat before me, blinking in confusion, for a few seconds before leaning out the carriage window once again, this time craning my neck as I sought to catch sight of what had just startled me.

I didn’t expect to see it again because I was convinced it was nothing more than a trick of the mind caused by exhaustion or even the carriage’s forward motion and the resulting shadows cast by the trees.

I’d hoped to see nothing back there.

I was wrong, however.

A woman stood by the side of the road, her figure unmoving as it dwindled in the distance. I could see no fluttering of her skirts or her cloak, which meant she wasn’t walking. She stood, however, facing forward, following the road’s direction. I recognized her immediately as the woman I’d seen lurking among the trees behind Shepley Abbey, for she was dressed the same way, her figure not at all varying from the tall and slender shape I’d seen a few days earlier.

“No, I must be mistaken,” I muttered, my gaze still on her. “Her dress appears to be common enough.”

I couldn’t convince myself, however, no matter what I tried to say, no matter how many times I said it. The woman was still visible to me -- though considerably reduced by the growing distance between us -- when I pulled myself back inside the carriage. I must have stared at nothing for several moments afterward, my mind working hard to understand what had just happened. All efforts were easily negated when I became aware of an uncomfortable tingling up and down my arms -- an unsettling crawling of the skin that made me shiver involuntarily.

I couldn’t be sure of certain details, only the more general impression of the woman and her appearance, but somehow something nagged at me for a while. It was an insistent fragment of my memory, one that had taken a hold of me and refused to let go because of its fantastic, awful nature.

The woman was cloaked in dark material -- perhaps black. Her dress was light, quite likely plain white. The only part of her body that showed was her face, for I saw no arms, no hands, no shoes, no hair. Her face was white -- not pale like Marianne’s complexion, but white.

Bloodless, almost. Her mouth was tiny, perhaps as pale as her skin. And her eyes -- I shiver even now to think about them -- her eyes were closed. She seemed to be asleep on her feet, if I were to find a more appropriate description.

And yet I sensed, indeed I knew, she was looking at me. There was something about that slumbering face that told me I was being watched.

“Impossible,” I said aloud, seeking comfort in the sound of my voice. “I caught her in the midst of blinking. That’s all it is. Or she simply closed her eyes for a moment or turned her gaze down. There’s nothing unusual about that. No, nothing at all.”

I didn’t know how long I sat there, absorbing these recollected bits and feeling a vague fear press down upon me. A sudden bump on the road startled me out of my strange fancies, and when I realized that I had my new books on my lap, I immediately turned to them for my diversion. Little by little, the cold fear that lingered inside the carriage dissipated. The memory of that strange woman melted under the onslaught of Smollett’s satirical prose, and I was chuckling at poor Matthew Bramble’s cantankerous letters to his long-suffering doctor.

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